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My 500-Year Journey from Scotland to Rome

“I had been drawn to the Catholic Church for years but still was not completely sure it was biblically faithful. Would it disappoint us as the Protestant church had? I didn’t know where home was for a Christian who just wanted to love and follow Jesus faithfully and truthfully. While many people are drawn to the Church through reading the Church Fathers and history, I needed to see and touch historical and holy sites. In 2018, I received a generous grant allowing me to journey across Europe to visit the foundations of our faith… The last day of our pilgrimage culminated in taking the Scavi Tour under the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica to see the actual bones of St. Peter. This moving experience confirmed I had found the biblical New Testament Church I had longed to know…”

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Journey Home episode

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Coming Home: A Multi-denominational Adventure

John Baudhuin |
Anglican & Episcopalian, Conversion Stories, Lutheran, Reverts to the Catholic Faith | One Comment

I was born third of four boys to a family in Wisconsin; though most of my life growing up and starting my own family was spent just over the border in Minnesota. My father’s grandfather had emigrated from Namur, Belgium just after the American Civil War and joined America’s largest Belgian-American community in Door County, Wisconsin. My mother’s side had been in the U.S. much longer, descending from Scots-Irish ancestors. My grandfather, who died when my father was just 17, had married outside the Catholic Faith in about 1910 to a German-Lutheran woman; hence our part of the family was raised in the German-Lutheran faith, and our step-grandfather pastored a German-Lutheran church in northern Wisconsin for half a century.

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Lead, Kindly Light…in the footsteps of Blessed John Henry Newman

Fr. Anthony Aarons MSM |
Anglican & Episcopalian, Anglo-Catholic, Conversion Stories | 4 Comments

It has been said that life is a journey and not a destination. For close to fifty years I followed a spiritual path that was shaped in and through the Anglican Communion. Choirboy, altar boy, priest, secretary to the Diocesan Synod, Franciscan friar, confessor to bishops, and chaplain at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, I have seen it all in Anglicanism.

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A Heart’s Journey

Kathryn J. Betournay, D.Min. |
Atheist, Atheist/Agnostic, Church of Christ, Conversion Stories | 3 Comments

I was born on April 15, 1952 in Columbus, OH, the first of 2 children, into a family that did not practice any religious faith. We moved every couple of years, as my dad advanced his career as a professor. Christmas and Easter were celebrated as secular holidays. In fact there seemed to be an outright opposition in my household to anything to do with God, Jesus, the Bible, or church.

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History Brought Me Home

Dustin Mantz |
Atheist, Atheist/Agnostic, Conversion Stories, History, Methodist, Secular | 9 Comments

I was born and raised in the small town of Huntsville, about 60 miles north of Houston, Texas. I was not brought up in a particularly Christian household. My mother had attended Sunday worship services in various faith traditions throughout her childhood, all stemming from Calvinistic theology with an evangelical twist. My father was a disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witness, who rarely spoke of any sort of faith. So, as one could imagine, I grew up in a rather secular household with some moral standards, but no moral lawgiver.

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One Church

Jeff Buck |
Conversion Stories, Evangelical, Methodist, Non-Denominational

I had not considered the Catholic Church as an option. From my perspective, Catholicism was not “normal” Christianity. It seemed very strict and ritualistic, with too much pomp and ceremony. It seemed too formal, rather than “Spirit led.” … After some thought, I had to admit that my opinions were based upon mere glimpses into the Church and that I actually knew very little about Catholicism.

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From the World to the Word

Gail Buckley |
Conversion Stories, Methodist, Secular | 4 Comments

I was raised in the Methodist faith in a small town in North Carolina. The only Catholic Church in town was a block away from my house and a large brick home which served as a convent was just around the corner. I would often see the nuns, dressed in their habits, walking to the Catholic school which adjoined the church. Whenever I saw them I felt a great sense of respect. I considered them to be very holy, although, I knew nothing about the Catholic faith.

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Towards the Light of His Truth

Todd Meade |
Baptist, Conversion Stories | 5 Comments

I read more on the histories of various denominations and competing theologies and, in the process, my eyes were opened to the fundamental fallacy of the doctrine of sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible alone is the sole authority for Christian belief. As I later discovered, so many people who end up becoming Catholic realized that the belief that all Christian teachings must be found in the Bible is not itself taught in the Bible!

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Two Journeys, One Destination — The Story of a Husband-and-Wife Pastor Team

Richard and Ruth Ballard |
Baptist, Conversion Stories, Lutheran, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Ruth: That Good Friday, I carefully took out white construction paper and the big, thick crayons that normally were reserved for my coloring books. Slowly, and very deliberately, I drew three crosses, the middle one in red. I don’t know how long I sat there, but I remember talking to Jesus in my own child-like way. That is my first memory of prayer or any understanding, however rudimentary, of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the sins of the world. I was a preschooler, not yet attending kindergarten, but this memory is still so vivid and detailed that it doesn’t seem that almost fifty years have passed.

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